Slashdot Mirror
11 Digit Dialing Comes Home to New York
Traicovn writes "The NY Times (free registration, yadda yadda) is carrying an article about 11 digit dialing coming to the city of New York for all phone calls, including inner city calls. Yes, that means even to dial across the street you will have to dial 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. Eventually as the phone number system fills up because of more people having cellphones/pager/fax and a home/office phone line we may see this happening in more cities across the nation or the NANPA may have to intervene by making phone numbers longer in general."
So 10-digit == 11-digit dialing, basically, no?
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
get a cellphone and you don't need to think about numbers.
just search a name from the list and press dial
The worst part about 10-digit local calls is never being sure whether it's free or toll.
Calling your neighbor across the street... probably not toll. Calling the local blockbuster... well, PROBABLY not. Calling a plumber you looked up in the phone book? No way to tell really, without committing to memory the HUGE tables of "local to" exchanges in the front of the phone book. (I used to develop automated calling systems and I've had to deal with this for years.)
It turns your phone bill into a reverse lottery every month.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
That sounds like a good idea, but there's a problem with it. How many phone lines do you have for yourself? A cell phone, regular phone, maybe fax machine, and who knows what else. So you might need 5 different phone numbers. How do you account for that?
Also, remember that its not only people who need phone numbers. I forget the exact number of people in NYC, but let's say its 10 million - enough to fill one area code. But remember the number of businesses in NYC, and the number of people who have cell phones, fax machines, etc... Also remember that there are only 5 or 6 area codes in NYC (I forget how many exactly), so that's only good for 50-60 million numbers. On top of all their numbers, they still need room for future expansion, because so far, people just keep getting more numbers. So that's why we need more and more numbers.
The only solution to that is to hide the number. Using a DNS might not be the best way though (as someone suggested), as the would only mean we need to remember even more oddities.
So how do we remember people's emails? Using automatic address books. How do I remember someones mobile phone number? I don't write them down, and I can't even recall my own number from memory. Again address books.
So the answer is that we will get even more advanced address books that hide away the IP (or whatever ID might be used) simply because it is too hard to remember those numbers. Most phones have these already and it gets easier and easier to exchange mobile phone numbers.
And to make it even easier, I guess it would be easier and easier to redirect calls. For example, I am done with work and am on my way home. My bluetooth in my mobile phone no longer has any connection to the phone at work, so it automatically changes to mobile phone first. When I get home my home phone says hi to my mobile phone, and once again it automatically redirects me. And when someone calls me they automatically get redirected to where I am, and they only need to keep one single entry on me. Simple and easy.
All the technology is there (more or less) already, it all needs to be integrated. And if you are wondering what M$ might be up to, I bet this is something like it (and with emails as well). Just a guess;)
2) And, if you add the SAME number to the beginning of everything, that gives you nothing. Why would they do that?
3) I used to work on phone switch software, and the only reason I can see is that they don't want to have to differentiate between a local (i.e. 10 digit) call and a long distance (i.e. 11 digit) call. This way, the switch can run less code. No need to wait before it starts routing the call. It can start routing as soon as you start typing numbers. This, and the use of reserved area codes (\d[0,1]\d) as exchanges, was the big motivator behind the 10 digit move.
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
That's all well and good until you break your phone and realize that the only numbers you know are 911 and POSSIBLY your home number. I live in Japan where EVERYONE has a cell phone and they show the same dependancy. My cell phone got dropped in water once and I damned near had a heart attack freaking out over the possibility of losing so many phone numbers and email addresses. Fortunately, my new phone has a SONY 8MB memory stick which I back everything up to periodically. (I did recover the stuff from my old phone...Docomo phones are damned near indestructable)
Also, I type out full email addresses just about everytime I send an email to friends off of my work's Outlook Web Access. Maybe there's a better way, but it's not that hard to remember an old fashioned email address.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Yes direct dail is cute, but unnessary. Most places only list the master number any way. Even on caller id, so if I place a redail I get the master number, so why have direct lines? Even for those few that a direct number can help... why give it to all?
Businesses with updated phone systems and ISDN PRI can deliver desktop calling party info to outside lines as well as internally. Many places (like us) haven't made that upgrade yet and still rely on T1 trunking which doesn't have that capability -- on our system you get just the trunk number.
The advantage to direct inward dial is huge. For a company of 500 people, you'd need 5 people to handle incoming call routing (4 operators and a supervisor), that's easily $200k in pay & bennies alone compared to under $5k for DID capable trunks.
You *could* have a voicemail system answer the calls and do some lame menu/directory system, but many businesses and customers can't or won't tolerate that, they want a person or an individual voicemailbox to answer it.
Any shmoe can print up business cards and claim to be a pager company, a wirelesss com[any or a CLEC. Then he orders some phone numbers. Thanks to rules that the industry doesn't want to change, the minimum block of numbers that can be allocated is 10,000 numbers. The are a lot of blocks of 10,000 phone numbers where 100 or 1 or none are actually being used. It doesn't take many schomes doing this before "we're running out of numbers."
In Illinois the consumer groups wanted to lower the block size but they were denied.
BTW, the management of numbers is handled by a independent company hired for the purpose. The local ILEC has no control over it. Number portability is supposed to happen. In most states, you can keep your phone number when you change your local phone company.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Umm no. They'll have a single PRI (specifically 23 B channels and 1 D - so 9 PRI's would actually only allow 207 simultanious incoming and outgoing calls - but I digress), and 200 numbers. The numbers are, hopefully, one nice large bank, and when the PBX receives a call for 555-1212, it'll be smart enough to see 'oh 1212 is ours, that goes to ext 1212'. At least that's the easy way to do it ;) When you move up to T1's, you'll route to extensions via DNIS digits. The easy way to do that is also by the last 4 digits (but it sucks when you get an 800# that happens to have the same last 4 as another 800 or an internal extension - but again I digress)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)